sole guidance of that enlightened reason on which so many pride themselves at the present day, as sufficient for every purpose? Without any deprivation of this distinguishing characteristic of man, we ask, would reason, unassisted by revelation, have ever disclosed to us those secret recesses of our hearts which are the defiled abodes of impure and evil affections, the continual residence of evil spirits, urging us to every act of violence? Would this same reason ever have opened the gates of immortality, and exhibited to our astonished minds the pure and blissful realities in store for the obedient and regenerated Christian? No: the stoutest advocate for natural reason would never venture to insist on such a perversion of truth; for the fact is, that common or instinctive reason is mistaken for true rationality, whilst the sacred Scriptures insist that no man can be entitled to the term rational, till he is born again of the Spirit of God; and, in the absence of this discrimination, all the error now prevalent on this subject has absolutely taken place.
What has been the effect of this boasted light of nature among heathen nations, who are probably born with, and capable of exercising, their innate ideas of right and wrong equally with ourselves? According to the best accounts we can collect, they live as beasts, and in some instances as cannibals, preying upon each other. Such then, might have been our lot, but for the mercy of our adored Father in opening to our minds our natural ignorance, our inherent depravity, and in His love and compassion communicating to us a power of exerting our prerogatives as men, and, by a knowledge of Himself, of His Word, and of our liability to rush into evil, to prepare us by such means for the
